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Cheese Cream Toast

A toast of stale bread topped with grated cheese and served with a thickened milk and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Cream Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the slices of stale bread.

  2. Cover the toasted bread with grated cheese.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water to form a paste.

  3. Stir the flour paste into the boiling milk and cook until thickened.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Provides the sturdy base that holds the cheese and toasts to a crisp surface.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns over the toast, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess as it thickens.
Plain flour
Thickens the milk when cooked, giving the sauce a smooth, coating body.

The step that matters

Stir the flour paste into the boiling milk and cook until thickened. Adding the paste to hot liquid while stirring keeps flour from clumping. Cooking it through removes the raw starch taste and lets the sauce thicken fully.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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